


The Greeks Were Here First.

by IllBuildATimeMachine



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, Supernatural
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, I've Tried To Make It Funny, Just Another Case, M/M, Maybe a bit of fluff, My First AO3 Post, My First Fanfic, No smut so far, Prophecy, Suggest More Tags Please, attempt at fluff, fusionfic, percabeth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-29 02:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12072642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IllBuildATimeMachine/pseuds/IllBuildATimeMachine
Summary: Team Free Will Discover the existence of the Greek World by accident when they meet Percy and Annabeth on a case. "Just one case" becomes a full-fledged adventure when they find that they need to descend a hundred steps to hell to find an ancient magical object that was thought to be lost forever.Update : I HAVE STARTED UPLOADING AGAIN!! NEW CHAPTERS EVERY 10 DAYS, I THINK.Love,I'llBuildATImeMachine.





	1. Welcome To Heathwall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cas is an environmentalist, saving people and electricity with equal sincerity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there guys! This is the very first chapter from my very first fic. I promise you nothing because I’m super busy with schoolwork and stuff. But I promise that if you are a Rick Riordan fan, there’s something sweet here for you.  
> And, since even I don’t know what is going to happen next, let me just say that I’ll be doing my best. I’m planning for a lot of unresolved chemistry between Dean and Cas, and not any smut as of yet (because I’m not that confident about it, and I don’t really know much about gay smut.)  
> Let me know when I get too sentimental or boring or even when I’m doing really well.  
> All your comments are welcome! I’ll try to answer them as and when I can.  
> EDIT : Any situations or ideas you want to incorporate? Lemme know in the comments! I'll try my best... :)

It was a hot, sunny day, with probably soaring temperatures, if Dean had tried to check. But he didn’t really care. He was doing his thing, driving his baby across the hot, dusty roads of Arizona, and he was happy. Happy with the wind slapping across his sweaty forehead and neck, happy with the AC/DC that was thumping out from his music system, and happy with the two people in his car. While singing along with a particularly loud song, he snuck a glance at his best friend sitting next to him, who, incidentally, wasn’t looking happy enough.

Castiel, his best friend, was sitting glued to the leather seat, clutching his seatbelt for dear life, white as a sheet. Even white with fear, Cass looked impressive with his blue eyes and shock of untidy black hair. The sunlight fell on him in such a way that Cass looked gilded at the edges. His picture perfect profile made Dean want to reach out and trace the curves with his fingers. Especially the curves near the base of his throat. But Dean only laughed. “Too fast for you, Cass?” he asked, teasingly.

“I believe we are more than 50 mph above the speed limit, Dean. This cannot end well.” Cass replied with clenched teeth.

Dean chuckled. He couldn’t explain it. He was so monstrously, strangely, _happy_. But he slowed down a bit. Just a little bit. And when he saw Castiel loosening up little by little next to him, he kept slowing down more and more, until he actually was in the speed limit. He sighed slightly. This was _unpardonable_. He was in the speed limit. On an _empty_ highway.

Dean accelerated again, reveling in the smooth, beautiful growl of Baby’s engine.

“Slow down, Dean.”

That would be Sammy, from somewhere in the back of the car. Dean thought Sam was sleeping, as he usually did when Dean drove. The princess needed his beauty sleep, apparently, with his mouth half open and drooling.

“Sure, Sheriff,” Dean replied. “As soon as we reach wherever we’re going.”

“Heathwall, Dean. The town has a name,” Sam said, reaching forward for the map on the dashboard. “Is Cass sleeping?”

“No, I am not sleeping,” replied a very clenched-teeth voice from the front seat. “I am preparing to use the powers of heaven to slow down this car if Dean does not slow down before I count to three.”

Sam, now absorbed in the map in his lap, said, “Sure, go ahead.”

“Don’t you dare touch my Baby with your mojo!” Dean sputtered. “She has a sensitive engine.”

“One,” said Castiel, warningly.

Dean rebelliously accelerated to 90mph.

“Two.” Castiel’s tone was unmistakably serious.

The car continued forward at 110mph.

“Three.”

There was a flash like a camera’s. And the car was suddenly next to a board that proclaimed WELCOME TO HEATHWALL.

“Aw, Cass, no.” Dean said, indignantly punching the steering wheel and then leaning back into the soft seat in resignation.

Sam’s eyes were as big as saucers. “You can do that?” he asked.

“Evidently,” Cass replied, gruffly.

“Why didn’t you do that three _hours_ ago, then? I would have been spared all that nauseating music.”

It was Dean’s turn to widen his eyes. “You find AC/DC nauseating?”

Sam kept eye contact. “They scream too much.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “Bitch.”

“Jerk.” Sam said, without even looking up from his map.

“Could we focus on the case now, instead of sleeping and deriving undue pleasure from driving through hot roads at dangerous speeds?” Castiel demanded.

“Sure,” said Sam. “I think we have a minor god to handle, judging by the numerous disappearances of virgins in the last 15 days.”

“How many of them?” Dean asked.

“Six, as of yesterday.”

“Damn. The rate at which that god is going through them.”

“We still do not know whether it is a god or not,” interjected Cass.

“Yeah, technically, we don’t.”

Dean had already started opening the car door. “The virgins can wait for another hour. I need food. Come on, both of you. Time to find a good greasy diner.”

They came across one almost immediately, a diner with its neon lights still blinking pink and blue letters, declaring “DIBBY’S” in the light of the 2pm sun. As they walked closer, the lights stopped all of a sudden. Out of years of training and experience, both Sam and Dean tensed, both their minds thinking _ghosts or angels?_ Only Cass walked on, oblivious to this. When he noticed that Dean and Sam had stopped, he turned around questioningly.

Dean gestured to the lights, one hand inching to the back of his jeans for his gun.

Cass rolled his eyes. “Come on in,” he said to them as he resumed walking. “That was me.”

Dean and Sam looked at each other. Dean shrugged, and they followed Cass into the diner.

“So, Cass, you switched off those lights,” said Dean while they were waiting for their food to come. “Why exactly?”

“Electricity.”

“What, you’re an environmentalist now?” Dean said, grinning.

“I believe in using what is necessary. It’s a habit, Dean. We do not waste electricity in heaven,” said Cass, without humor. “I could switch them back on if you want me to, though.”

“Uh, no, Cass. It’s fine,” said Sam, a bit distractedly. “So get this,” he said, looking at them both from above the pages of his research. “Six virgin high schoolers, all Catholics, all of them relatively tall, athletic brunettes, go missing three days from each other. “Local authorities believe that these girls were friends who decided to run away from the constricting environments of their homes into bigger cities. Searches are still on. Worried parents deny- blah blah blah.” Any theories?” Sam asked them.

They all lapsed into silence as the dumpy old waitress put down their plates of food with a forced smile. Her smile immediately became more cheerful when Dean thanked her with a wink and a grin. “Thank you, Abby,” Castiel said to her after he read her name tag.

"Some sort of sex demon trying to abolish virginity,” said Dean through a mouthful of cheeseburger, after she had left them.

Cass looked unconvinced at this. "I state it could be a minor god looking for power. Sacrificing virgins is considered an easy way to invite the favor of gods in many customs,” he said.

Sam nodded his head at this. “I would go with Cass here… Because there is another thing that has been found at every disappearance.”

“Which is?”

Sam turned around a page of his research for them to see. It was a color printout of a picture of a silver bracelet. It looked like it was woven from many tiny, delicate chains into a silver bracelet, with attached charms.

“So?” Dean asked, trying to see what was so special about the bracelet. “It’s a small town. Half the chicks here will wear the same jewelry at least once a day.”

It was Cass who replied, his attention diverted from the coffee and biscuits in front of him. He traced his fingers across the charms attached to the bracelet. “It’s the charms, Dean. Look at them. A crescent moon, a bow and arrow, and-”

“And a four-pointed star,” completed Sam.

“Don’t complete each other’s sentences, both of you, it’s beyond creepy.”

Realization dawned on Cass’s face. “Diana.”

Sam nodded vigorously. “ _Yes._ ”

Seeing that they were ignoring him in their epiphanies, Dean went back to his comforting hamburger and beer, sneaking glances at their enlightened faces. It was Sam who had convinced him to come out for this case, and Dean had said yes only because of the amount of driving involved. It had been a long time since Baby had met the dusty roads of Arizona. Another reason was Cass, who had practically lit up when he heard about the case. He had been all for saving virgins.

Dean seldom did cases for the satisfaction of saving lives anymore. It had become too tiring after a point of time, and nowadays he just wanted to sit at the bunker, doing all sorts of cool stuff to Baby and observing Cass slowly adjust himself to his new residence. Dean hadn’t admitted this to himself, but the only thing he really wanted now was to retire. Saving the world a couple of times had been enough adventure for him to last another two lifetimes. Not a white picket fence life, mind you, but just something that would guarantee him a good night’s sleep in the same bed every day with the same person to wake up next to.

“Dean, are you listening? Do we have bronze salt bullets?” Sam was waving his hands in front of Dean’s face.

Broken out of his thoughts, Dean looked around, dazed. “What?”

“Bronze salt bullets, Dean.”

_Why do you say my name so much, Cass?_ Dean thought.

“Yeah, somewhere in the car,” he said. “Are we killing this Diana chick?”

“Yes, we should,” said Cass. “After we find her.”

“We could talk to Abby there,” said Sam. “Since the both of you have been so cute to her, she might answer some basic questions for us.”

They waited for Abby to return, to refill Cass’s coffee or ask whether Sam wanted more lettuce in his Grand Salad. By that time, they went back to planning. “So we talk to Abby now, and then we call it a day,” said Sam. “I’ll go look for a motel while you both charm answers out of her.”

“Fine,” said Dean, with a sip of his beer. He was still hungry and was eyeing the last biscuit on Cass’s plate with interest.

“And tomorrow we’ll talk to the victim’s families,” added Cass.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “We could split up for the questioning. I could take three families and you could take three. We’ll meet up here for lunch.”

“Okay,” said Dean. “Baby goes with us.”

“No, she won’t.” said Sam. “You can either have Baby or you can have Cass.”

Dean’s struggle was comical to watch. He finally gave in and took the biscuit from Cass’s plate, contemplating. “Cass,” he said finally. “I’ll have Cass.” He looked up and saw Cass watching him seriously, and immediately looked away, with a sudden lurch somewhere near his stomach.

“Fine,” said Sam, grinning at his victory, and standing up to leave. “And here’s Abby. I’ll text you guys the name of the motel.”

***

Abby wasn’t much help, because she wasn’t connected to the victim’s families in any way except as a bystander in the town. “They were all nice girls,” she kept saying. “They had come up here once or twice.”

She was also a believer in the theory that the girls had run away because they hated the small town. “I mean, who wouldn’t, right? It’s in the middle of nowhere. We don’t even have a decent supermarket here.”

“That is true,” Cass said, with his usual empathy. “I hope a supermarket comes up soon.”

Dean glanced at Cass in alarm. “No way, Cass. Nothing like that will happen here.”

Abby, on the other hand, looked hurt. "A supermarket wouldn’t cause much harm, sir.”

“We need to go,” Dean said to Abby with a smile, and gesturing for Cass to get up.

“Thank you,” Cass said. He still looked like he wanted to bless this small town with a Wal-Mart branch right now, and Dean could not risk something like that happening. Cass had been too careless with his powers lately, almost as if he believed that he should do all the good in the world before he lost his powers once again.

They walked back to the Impala before they realized that it was with Sam.

“Well, so much for charming answers out of our old Abby,” said Dean. For once, he looked like he didn’t know what to do.

“I believe we are what they refer to as “jobless”,” said Cass with the whole air-quotes gesture.

Dean rolled his eyes. “I have taught you not to use that every single time you use a human phrase.”

“I am not human anymore, Dean,” Cass said seriously. He looked like he was going to add something else, too, but at that moment, a young girl walked up to them. She was blond in a slightly unkempt way, as if she had been travelling for some time. Her backpack answered for the length of her journey. She was nervously fingering a slightly battered red baseball cap in her hand.

“Excuse me,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “Could I know where the Toothpaste Inn would be?” Dean wasn’t fooled, either by the pretty manners or by the weird name he knew she had just conjured up.

“Right next to the Shampoo Hotel,” he said to her, sarcastically.

She blinked her dark grey eyes, surprised, before she got back into character and gave a giggle. This seemed to intrigue Castiel, for some reason unknown to Dean. He actually smiled back in a simpering way.

_Her high school flirting is actually working on him?_ Dean thought, surprised. The girl and Cass had actually struck up a conversation by now and she was telling him that she was backpacking across the country after a drop from college. “I’m Beth, by the way,” she said, turning to Dean.

At that moment, Dean’s phone pinged with a text from Sam. _Did she just flinch at my text alert?_ He took one look at the screen and almost choked in surprise.

“Toothpaste Inn,” the screen happily declared. “Five hundred meters north.”

“Damn it. Look at this,” he said, showing her the screen with a surprised smile. Now she really _did_ take a step back from the phone. Dean frowned. “You scared of cell phones, sweetheart?”

“She seems to recoil from those,” observed Cass. “I don’t like them, either, I assure you. I find their regular noises very annoying,” he added to her.

She nodded back. “So,” she said, “Where is north?”

***

“I don’t trust her.” Dean said, swinging himself on the lumpy bed in their room and giving a tired sigh as he felt himself relax. “Something about her is just… I don’t know. Odd?”

“She looks harmless, though,” Sam said, frowning thoughtfully at Dean. “And so does her friend. Maybe she just needed directions, you know?”

Dean frowned back, then glanced at Cas, who was sitting on the chair next to the window and looking out. “Cas was all over her, though.”

Smiling wickedly, Sam leaned forward a bit in his bed. “Really? But don’t you think she’s too young for you, Cas?”

Cas turned to look at the both of them. “Evidently,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “I am almost five thousand years old. And since I am _not_ interested in her, my age will not matter.”

Sam rolled his eyes and looked over at Dean, who shook his head like he’d given up long ago.

“Both of you need to sleep,” Cas continued. “There is a lot of legwork we need to complete tomorrow. I’ll keep watch.”


	2. Neighbours Bring Brownies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a short sword fight with their nice neighbors, through which Dean manages to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene is shamefully short. I didn't even plan on posting it, but since my little brother liked it so much, I decided to post it as a treat for him. Don't kill me! The next chapter will have a satisfactory length. Thanks for the kudos so far! Comments are always welcome.  
> Love,  
> IllBuildATimeMachine.

Five seconds before the knock came, Cas had already sensed him on the other side of the door. It was not Sam. Five seconds were enough to arm himself with everything he needed, and the vial of holy water was held ready in his hand.

 _Knock, knock_.

 _Were enemies so polite?_ Cas wondered, as he reached for the latch. No sooner had he opened the door than he saw, in less than a split second, a sword rushing on towards him. If he had still been human, the expert slash could have sliced him into two. But with his grace back, the world was laughably slow.

Cas easily stepped back, took a look at the attacker, counted the number of eyelashes he had, looked behind him to see who was watching from the street _and_ replied to his mail in the angel radio, until the slash was complete. Then he dashed the holy water onto the boy’s startled face, looking for signs of spontaneous combustion as he took a step back.

The boy looked untouched. Untouched by the water, not even a _little_ wet. This was a new one for Cas, who stood there, frowning.

The boy grinned at Cas, and at the tiny, now empty vial of holy water. “Hey, it’s completely okay if you don’t have a sword, too,” he said, with mock sympathy.

Cas was still looking at him. _I must have missed. How can he still be dry?_ “What are you?” he asked curiously, releasing his angel blade and pointing it at the attacker’s face, who lifted his sword in answer, grinning all the while.

“I’m a Percy,” he said, and moved ahead with commendable speed, attempting to jab at Cas, who moved fluidly to his right. With his left hand, the angel blade clanged in the air as it crashed with Percy’s sword. The impact should have comfortably thrown the kid’s sword ten yards away, but there it remained, still in his hand. _He is well trained,_ Cas noted, appraising the teenaged guy, and parrying furiously as the next slash landed inches from his left shoulder. Flipping his blade and gripping it like a dagger, Cas slammed into the hilt of the sword where it joined the glowing blade. This time, it was knocked out of the boy’s hand and flew into the air, embedding itself right next to Dean’s bed.

Dean didn’t even stir. And _that’s_ when Cas realized that he still hadn’t lifted the sleeping grace from Dean. He was willing the grace away, willing Dean to wake up, when the growling started near the door. Tensing, he glared apprehensively at the monster slowly approaching him. It was like every other of those abominations- if Cas ignored the fact that this particular hellhound was wearing a Christmas colored collar, that said- _huh? Whose name was that? Mrs-_

Cas never got to read the name clearly, because the hellhound lunged at his throat, unafraid of the angel blade. One heavy paw crashed into his jaw, and the other slammed into his lower ribs, surely breaking one or two. Judging by the pain, maybe _all_ of his ribs.

His head hit the wall of the motel room as he crumpled into a corner in pain, using the very last adrenalin-burst of grace to wake Dean up. He watched Beth from last night walk into the room.

“Guess we didn’t need my cap, after all,” she said, glaring at the guy called Percy.

“Didn’t want you into the unnecessary fighting,” he replied shortly. “Now, do we wake up Sleeping Beauty over there or do we interrogate this guy here?”

“He looks like he’s moving,” she said, removing her dagger and holding it steadily, as she watched Dean stir. “The first thing I’ll ask him is how he managed to sleep through all of this.”

***


	3. Swords and Guns Are Detrimental to New Friendships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dean and Cas find themselves cornered by sword-wielding teenagers and a hellhound named Mrs. O’Leary, followed by a tea party with aforementioned sword-wielding teenagers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have tests coming up from the 7th :'''''( which means not much activity here on this front...  
> You guys do not know how encouraging those kudos are!! Thank you all. Keep reading, and please let me know what you like/don't like, because except from all you guys, the only person I've shown this fic to is my little brother. I could always do with more feedback.  
> Love!  
> I'llBuildATimeMachine.

Dean woke up suddenly, and looked around in surprise.

Beth, the blond girl from yesterday was leaning against the bathroom door. All traces of flirting had gone from her, to be replaced by an intimidating, intelligent expression in her stormy grey eyes that made her look very much like an old history teacher Dean had once had. Maybe it was because of the dagger she held in her hand, and maybe also because she held it correctly, like she knew how to use it.

“Hello,” she said, waving the dagger.

On the other side of the room stood the boy, Beth’s friend from yesterday. Tall and lean, he looked about her age. His longish black hair flopped over his forehead into his startlingly green eyes. He looked less like he was going to stab Dean, but the sword in his hands looked deadly enough. It was a strange bronze colored sword, and  exactly like the girl’s dagger, it almost glowed in the dim light of the motel room.

_Where the hell are Sam and Cas?_

_Where is the gun under my pillow?_

“That’s a sweet sword, kid. Where’d you get it? Backstage?” Dean said, sarcastically.

“Nah. At the dollar store. Want one, too?”

“Right now, kid, I’d like _two_ of them.”

Beth smiled thinly and moved away from the bathroom door, stepping towards him. “Wonderful. We can go shopping after you answer our questions.”

In the split second in which she was walking towards him, Dean whipped out a vial from his socks. He splashed her with the holy water before she could realize what was happening. The other kid shouted out her name in alarm. _Annabeth?_ Dean waited for her to start screaming in pain.

Nothing happened.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “What is it with you guys and throwing water at perfectly nice people?”

Dean looked at her, puzzled. The other kid spoke up from his side of the room, jerking the thumb of his free hand towards a strangely familiar crumpled heap in the corner. “He said hello like that, too.”

 _Is that Cas?_ Worry bloomed somewhere in his stomach, but showing it would be stupid. “Yeah, we reserve the complementary drinks for annoying teenagers.”

In a flash, Annabeth’s blade was across his throat, cool and sharp to the touch. _Damn,_ he thought, one warrior acknowledging another. _Is Annabeth even her real name?_ She knew she was tiny and wouldn’t be able to hold him all out, so she had pinned him face-down onto his bed, an elbow and knee digging painfully into him. He was very effectively immobilized.

“Well, next time, serve them in a tray. Still wanna be snarky?”

Dean resigned himself. “Fine. What do you want?”

The other guy, Percy, stepped close to where Dean was. “Answers,” he said, theatrically.

From top of him, Dean could almost feel his captor rolling her eyes. “ _Duh,_ Seaweed Brain.” Annabeth said. “Haven't we been dramatic enough?”

“What? I couldn’t help it,” the guy said, grinning.

“Wait. _Seaweed Brain?_ Really?” Dean chuckled.

“Shut _up_!” both of them said to him together.

“Now,” said Annabeth. “Who are you?” The cold blade beneath his neck tightened its grip.

 “My name is Dean Winchester. That’s my friend Cas. We’re hunters, here on a case.”

"A case?” asked Percy.

“Yeah, you know, we noticed stuff. Virgins disappearing, random thunderstorms in the desert, sudden low pressure areas, and things like that. We go around looking for strange stuff and when we find what’s causing them, we kill it and send it back to hell. That’s our job,” Dean explained. “Look, we’re the good guys, okay? I didn’t want to boast about it, but we’ve probably saved the world at least three times the last time I stopped to count. So, how about you kids give us some respect?”

Annabeth released him and stepped briskly away, with her eyes and her dagger still on him. “What is he?” she asked, gesturing towards Castiel. “I know he isn’t human. What is he?”

Percy still hadn’t relaxed his grip on his sword, which was pointed straight at Dean, who was debating whether it was safe to give them the truth or not. He didn’t want the pointy end of the sword any more nearer to him than it already was.

“He’s… an angel. He’s also a good guy, though he _almost_ ended the world once.”

Percy lifted an eyebrow skeptically. “An angel. Sure.”

Dean got up from the bed. Percy and Annabeth both tensed immediately. Dean held up his palms in a placating gesture. “Look, if you wanted to kill me, you’d already have done it. I’ve given you many answers. It’s my turn now.”

“What have you done to him?” asked Dean, gesturing to Castiel.

Percy and Annabeth shot him puzzled looks. “You can’t see her, either?”

“See what?” Said Dean, looking frantically back at Castiel. _What are they doing to you?_

“Mrs. O’Leary.”

_Is that the name of a ghost? But then cold spots? Light fluctuations?_

“And what exactly is a Mrs. O’Leary?”

Both Percy and Annabeth smiled at him as a growl sounded from the general direction of Cas’s corner. A deep, feral growl brought to Dean’s mind everything that he saw only in his nightmares.

“She’s introducing herself,” said Percy, fondly.

Dean felt his blood run cold.

_A hellhound._

“Call it off him. _Now._ ” Dean growled at Percy with sudden ferocity.

Percy and Annabeth shared a look. “Okay,” Percy gave a short whistle and suddenly the hellhound’s growls stopped. Dean glanced at him. “How did you manage that?”

“Well, I first learnt how to whistle when I was five-”

“Taming a hellhound, I mean,” Dean said, rolling his eyes.

“Mrs. O’Leary belonged to a friend,” said Annabeth, who had been watching their exchange. She looked like there were still a lot of questions she wanted to ask. However, any of her attempts in that direction were interrupted by Cas coughing hard and gaining consciousness. “Demigods,” he croaked painfully. “Dean, they’re demigods.” Percy immediately angled his sword towards Cas.

_Demigods? Huh? Can angels get concussions?_

“They look more like stringy teenagers to me, Cas,” Dean replied, skeptically eyeing Percy and Annabeth.

The doorbell rang. _Trust Sam to be polite even in a potentially hostage-like situation._ No one made a move to open it, so it seemed like Sam used his own pair of keys. He came in, holding two heavy pizza boxes and a plastic bag in one hand as he tried to stuff the keys back into his pocket. He came in, looked around and came nose to nose with the tip of Percy’s sword.

“Is that pizza?” Percy asked, gazing with undisguised interest at the boxes in Sam’s hand.

“Um, yeah,” said Sam, but his puzzled face made that statement sound more like a question. “And, some fries.”

Dean saw Annabeth roll her eyes. Dean believed, that having Percy as a friend, she spent her time perpetually rolling her eyes. Also, apparently, Sam didn’t seem that intimidated by the pointy end of Percy’s sword. He moved around easily, towards the table against the wall, and deposited all the food on it. But Dean knew – the tenseness in his shoulders and movement was only too apparent to Dean’s perception. Years of experience was validated when Sam whipped out a gun. He spun around with a high kick that knocked the sword away from Percy’s hand, and held Percy around the neck, gun to his temple.

Dean hadn’t even begun smiling with victory, when suddenly he was pinned to the ground. A very painful knee was digging into his kidney. Again.

“Leave him,” Annabeth declared. “Now.”

“Ladies first,” Sam said with equal seriousness.

“WILL EVERYONE CALM THEMSELVES?” Cas announced from his corner of the room, causing both Sam and Annabeth to look at him in surprise. “We are on the same side here! And guns and swords are detrimental to forming new alliances. Sam, leave Percy alone. Annabeth, you too. Get off Dean, please.”

When a 5000 year old angel orders people around, he does it with the expectation of being obeyed. And that is how they found themselves, after some time, around the vinyl-covered motel dining table, eating pizza and fries and coke. Dean glared at Annabeth and Sam for most of the conversation for two completely different reasons. Sam for their pie-less lunch, and Annabeth for the pain in his back where her knees had him pinned.

Also, his confidence was at an all-time low. He’d been immobilized _twice_ in one day, by a girl. Dean wasn’t sexist all that much, and girls were welcome to immobilize him all they wanted, but _still_. He couldn’t help remembering Jo. However, Annabeth seemed much better.

“Yeah, I’m Athena’s daughter,” Annabeth was saying now as she sipped on a teacup of coke. “And Percy here – son of Poseidon.”

Sam was fan-girling over this information with eyes as big as saucers. “No way!” he exclaimed. “How does that work?”

“Well,” Percy answered in a recitative tone, like this was a question he got all the time. “When certain Gods fancy certain humans, certain demigods are born.”

“They’re kind of a part of both worlds,” Annabeth added. “Many famous people were demigods, you know. Amelia Earhart, Houdini, Mozart, Archimedes…”

“They’re dangerous. There’s a reason Nephilim were banned,” Cas pointed out, to everyone’s surprise. So far he’d just been seated back in a chair, nibbling at a fry in contemplation. But now he leaned forward and said, seriously, “I sensed you as soon as we arrived in this town. But I didn’t expect you to approach us.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t talk so loudly about the Greek gods, you know,” Percy said. “Kind of hard to ignore you when you say things like, “So are we gonna kill this Artemis chick?” Though, you must know that Artemis will not appreciate being called a ‘chick’,” He said with a grin, glancing at Annabeth, who returned a wry smile.

“She happens to be a serious feminist,” Annabeth said in return to Sam’s questioning look.

Cas looked at her in surprise. “Really? That’s what she’s interested in at present?”

“That, and hunting. Don’t speak like you know her, man. It’s creepy,” Percy said.

Cas frowned in slight confusion. “But I did know her. We met during the in Athens once, and at that time she was looking for silver to build her carriage with.”

The table was silent for a moment as everyone digested Cas’s ancientness. Dean felt he had to speak up now. Someone needed to bring this conversation back to Earth, 2017. “So, Cas, if she’s your friend, you wouldn’t want us to kill her, right?”

Cas looked over at him. “It depends on what she’s done this time. I believe we should just make her return to New York right now, if possible, with the least amount of bloodshed.”

Annabeth smiled at the mention of New York. “You know a lot about us.”

Dean glanced at Sam once, just making sure that he wasn’t the only one who felt like he knew a _little_ less than the party at the table. “New York?” Dean asked, one eyebrow raised.

Percy beamed at him from across the table. “Oh, I absolutely love informing the mortals about this,” he muttered to Annabeth excitedly. Then he looked at Dean and Sam and said, casually, with just a hint of a shrug. “Oh, you know, the Greek Gods live on top of the Empire State Building in New York.”

All of them looked at each other, across a silent table, for a complete minute.

Sam blinked. “The… Empire State… Building?” he repeated.

“Yeup,” said Percy. “There’s an elevator, too, in case you’re wondering. Lousy music, though.”


	4. NOT A Unicorn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All was well and ready, until Percy’s ‘mode of transport’ crashed into Dean’s. Due to the belowmentioned traumatising circumstances, they'll leave to meet Artemis in the next chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone!  
> Couldn't resist posting another chapter, since I believe I'm now addicted to all your love and kudos and comments!  
> Thanks ever so much...  
> Love love love,  
> IllBuildATimeMachine.

Sam was fine with the Greek gods existing. It was an inevitable thing that was going to happen someday or the other, seeing that he and Dean had met up with a bunch of gods from other civilizations once. Hell, he had attorneyed in the court of judgment of the Egyptian god of death Osiris himself. It was just another normal day for him.

Sam was also fine with there being a goddess of the moon somewhere within a 30 mile radius. He was also fine with the goddess being besties with Cas during the Greek era. Because why not, right?

What Sam was _not_ fine with, though, was how two little kids, barely eighteen yet, had managed to overpower a battle hardened 5000 year old angel, and a 30 year old man who slept with a loaded shotgun under his pillow.

He meant to confront them with this little issue later, when Percy and Annabeth weren’t within earshot. He didn’t want to destroy the adorable teamwork between all of them right now by pointing out why Dean and Cas _hadn’t_ managed to kill aforementioned teammates.

They all had managed to finish their breakfast/lunch without any more swords being wielded and guns being cocked.

“Now that lunch is over, I vote we go over to Artemis and ask her about the issue of the missing virgins,” Cas said to them all. Sam was okay with this, though he had doubts about Cas’s behavior recently. He’d very nicely forgotten to mention that he knew Artemis when they were discussing her in the diner. He’d also kept the fact that Percy and Annabeth were demigods from Dean and Sam.

“Shouldn’t we find her location out first, and then plan how to storm the place before we actually storm it?” Sam asked. It seemed reasonable. Goddesses tended to be moody, Sam believed. He didn’t want to become moondust or something if Artemis happened to be PMSing.

“Hey hey hey. There will be no “storming” anywhere, okay?” Percy interjected, alarmed by Sam’s suggestion.

“Artemis trusts us,” Annabeth said, speaking for the first time after their lunch. “We will just send her an Iris-message and let her know we want to meet her, with some… um, friends.”

“Wouldn’t it involve less effort to just ask her to come here?” Dean asked. “What’s the use of being a goddess if she can’t teleport here and save us all the trouble?”

Cas shook his head. “She is a goddess, Dean. She will never agree to be heralded from place to place by mere mortals.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Well, fine then. This _mere mortal_ is going to go clean up some of his shotgun barrels. Let me know when you guys decide to off that Artemis chick.” And Dean went over to their ammo bag between the motel beds and started his regular cleanup.

That was so typical of Dean, to participate in the _doing_ , rather than the planning. He was a guy who wanted to shoot people first and ask questions later. Years of training had only embedded this characteristic even deeper into his psyche.

“Percy, please contact Artemis and let her know we’re coming,” said Cas. This too, Sam thought, was weird. Cas never took charge like this. But as he collected all the pizza boxes and coke cups from the table, Percy’s very interesting way of messaging made other thoughts drift away.

“What’s he doing?” Sam asked Annabeth when he saw Percy trying to angle a small crystal in the afternoon sunlight.

“He’s making a rainbow,” Annabeth explained as a rainbow fell on the floor between Percy and them. “Iris is the goddess of the rainbow, so we request her to relay our messages for us. Not for free, though,” she explained, as Percy threw what looked like a heavy silver coin into the rainbow on the floor, and it disappeared without a ripple. “That’s a _drachma_. Greek currency.”

“What's it called again, Vibgyor Messenger?” Sam asked.

Annabeth laughed. “Iris Message. But now that you’ve said ‘Vibgyor Message’, I’m going to find Iris Message a bit boring.” She looked over at him. “So,” she asked, “What sorts of monsters have you hunted?”

“Well, we started off with ghosts, then wendigoes, followed by your general sprinkling of vampires, hook-men, angry bugs, quite a lot of demons and hellhounds, some annoying angels, shapeshifters, werewolves, and, yes, let me see… sirens?”

She whistled. “Wow. Long list. Hard life?” she asked, like she already knew his answer.

***

Okay, Dean had to admit, this Percy kid was a riot. “You’re gonna have a bright future with the ladies, man,” he said to Percy while Cas was talking to one of the goddess’s handmaids through the Unicorn Messaging Thingy. “Funny and goofy is second only to funny and suave, and you’re good at the funny part so far. She your girlfriend?”

They both looked over to where Sam and Annabeth were sorting out Sam’s research. He seemed to be explaining to her how vampires were supposed to be killed, in gory detail and with a lot of gesticulation.

Dean watched as Percy gave a small nod, but it wasn’t the goofy nod he had expected from a teen with his first girlfriend or something. More than ‘Yes, she’s my girlfriend!’ this nod said ‘Yes, finally, and always.’ Percy’s nod was a challenge to the world itself and a promise to Annabeth at the same time.

Dean smiled to himself and looked over at Cas, who was just done with talking to the handmaid.

“Artemis says that we are welcome to come and visit her,” Cas said to Dean, mistaking his gaze for enquiry.

“Well, then,” Dean said, “Let’s get going.” He looked over at Percy. “Maybe my car will fit you both in, too. Are you guys ready?”

“Don’t worry about your car,” Percy said. “We have… other modes of transport.”

Sam heard him say that. “Really? You have a car, too?”

“More or less,” said Annabeth.

Percy grinned a wicked grin. “Wait and watch.”

“‘Kay, kid.” Dean was completely fine with the arrangements. No car that was owned by any kid could ever hope to achieve Baby’s awesomeness, especially after the recent modifications Dean had done to her over the summer.

“Are you armed, Cas?” Dean asked the angel who was sitting on one of the motel beds, head bent low, fingertips supporting his forehead.

“Yes, Dean, I am.” Cas replied, without raising his head. “Are you?”

_I’m always armed, Cas. Even when I sleep. You, of all people, know that._

Instead of answering this completely redundant question, Dean sat down next to Cas, fidgeting with his small pocket knife. “Cas, what’s wrong?”

This time, Cas turned his head, and Dean could see the troubled look in his eyes. “Don’t you feel it, Dean?”

“What?”

But that was all Dean would get for today. He could almost see the shutters going down in Cas’s eyes, the ‘Forget I said anything’s starting to come up.

“Nothing,” Cas said, standing up. “Let’s go.”

Dean sat there for a moment longer, just a tiny, lingering moment longer, and let himself feel it all. He wanted to hold Cas back and ask him what all his ‘Nothing’s meant, if they meant anything at all.

Then he got up and left the room, shouting behind him, “Get your asses up and moving, everyone. We got a goddess to meet!”

Outside, the day was cloudy. Percy was standing under the motel sign, hands on his hips, with the blue neon sign illuminating his face. For some reason, he was looking up at the sky.

“Hey, Percy,” Dean said, walking up to him, and scanning the motel parking lot. “Where’s your ‘mode of transport’?”

Percy pointed in the general direction of the sky. “Right there,” he said with a smirk.

Dean turned and his eyes focused on a black speck against the overcast sky, steadily coming closer and closer until it started to look strangely like… _a horse? WITH FREAKING GODDAMN WINGS!_

“Is it just me or is that a flying horse? With wings?” Dean asked, trying to be calm and civilized about a _flying HORSE!_

Percy laughed. “Meet Blackjack, the flying horse _with wings_ , Dean.”

The horse snorted as he neared the parking lot, his wingspan the size of two cars kept end to end. Dean’s initial wonder and amazement evaporated as soon as he realized where the freaking horse was going to land.

_Baby._

With sirens flooding out everything else in his brain, Dean sprinted towards his Impala like he never had before, waving his arms like a madman.

“NOT ON MY BABY, YOU _FRIGGING **UNICORN**_!!!” He screamed at it.

Some part of his brain that wasn’t going crazy heard Percy say something that sounded like “Uh-oh.” A second later, the horse whooshed down upon the hood of Dean’s car with a sickening _Wump-Wump-CRUNCH!_

Dean screwed his eyes closed, never wanting to ever open them again.

***

Percy had never wanted to kill his only mode of transport before, but now seemed like a good time.

 _G’day, boss!_ Blackjack announced cheerfully as he daintily stepped down from the hood of the Impala on his toe-tips (or hoof-tips, whatever). Percy didn’t reply. He knew very little about cars, but even he could see that Dean’s car was- well, _used_ to be- a very beautiful one.

 _Gods of Olympus, Blackjack,_ Percy thought, glaring at his friend. _The entire lot was empty!_

Blackjack snorted, annoyed. _That human called me a unicorn, boss!_ _Do I look like I have a horn on my nose?_ he asked in frowny horse language.

Dean, Percy could see, still hadn’t opened his eyes. Sam was standing next to Dean, his hands on Dean’s shoulders in an attempt to stave off an upcoming anxiety attack. “It’s all right, Dean,” he seemed to be saying. “They are just four… little… dents, it’s honestly no big deal.”

Percy looked at the car and winced. He wished Dean would never open his eyes, so that he’d never have to see how ‘little’ the dents were. Because on the hood, evenly spread, were four huge hoof-shaped craters, deep enough to drink soup in.

Annabeth came and stood next to him. “I hope you have already grounded Blackjack for the next five hundred years or so, Percy,” she said sternly, slightly distressed at Dean’s traumatized expression as he finally opened his eyes and saw the horror that was awaiting him. (“It’s okay, Dean, Bobby will take care of that, now get in the car or I’m afraid I’ll have to witness you crying or something,” Sam was saying.)

Cas came and stood to the other side of Percy, mutely watching the entire thing, patiently waiting for them to start their trip to Artemis.

Dean and Sam were people that Percy got, understood, even. But this man next to him, with his dark mussed up hair and eyes so blue that he looked almost other-worldy - this man was hard to understand.

 _I mean,_ Percy thought, _Why would he want to wear that ridiculous trench-coat all the time?_

All his life, Percy had thought of angels as those tiny naked babies with tiny golden harps that went _poink_ when plucked. And, um, wings. Castiel, on the other hand, looked nothing like an angel. He most definitely did not have wings. Maybe they were hidden under that oversized trenchcoat.

Knowing people who’ll be fighting alongside you if the time comes was important. Annabeth had drilled it into his head, and so had Chiron. _Know your enemies, but know your friends better._

“Perseus Jackson.”

Percy turned to Cas, surprised, but Cas continued speaking, his deep voice gentle, but very serious.

“I know why you are here, Percy. It is still time for you to know, but I have been told that this could happen. Please remember one thing all through this… whatever this turns out to be. When the time comes, remember : _Love… and family, and friendship are more important than anything else you will ever be offered._ Okay?”

Percy felt Annabeth’s hand slipping into his, it’s warmth and familiarity reassuring. He stayed silent, and watched Cas watch the two Winchesters talking in the car. Cas continued, never taking his eyes off Sam and Dean.

“I know who I will stand with when it’s time. I know who I love.” Cas turned to Percy, and with the full force of his serious blue eyes, said one last thing. “But knowing is not enough. You have to make sure you don’t forget, either.”

Without waiting for any answer, Cas walked away towards the Impala, as Percy watched the tan trenchcoat billow in the wind.

He tightened his grip on Annabeth’s hand.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End Note : "Wump-Wump-CRUNCH" Rick Riordan has actually written those three exact words in Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrnith. I kept them, too, because Blackjack should technically make the same crashing noises irrespective of which car it is, right?  
> Scene : When Blackjack, ridden by Charles Beckendorf, lands on Percy's stepdad's Prius.


	5. Artemis, the Moon(shine) Goddess.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some small monsters, some goddesses, some surprises.  
> And the Prophecy of the Two Worlds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!  
> My exams are over! I'm mostly gonna get something like 65%, so in celebration of my not-studying, here's a chapter.  
> I'll either try to wrap this up within the next two-three weeks, or abandon it for the next eight months. I'm giving the IIT-JEE this year and there is so much to do.  
> If I had more time, I'd do a bit of fanart, too. :'( But, you know, right place, wrong time.  
> Please keep reading!  
> Love,  
> I'llBuildATimeMachine.

Annabeth hated flying. Something about it seemed so fundamentally _wrong_ to her. She had always been a person of permanence, of solid facts and foundations. From up here, the buildings that she loved for their permanence seemed like tiny matchboxes.

Flying felt like such a fragile, flimsy thing to do.

“You okay, Annabeth?” Percy shouted in front of her. She was clutching him with one hand like her life depended on it, the other hand holding a walkie-talkie that Sam had given to her before they left for Artemis’s camp.

“As long as I don’t fall off!” she shouted back at him through the whooshing of the wind in her ears.

“Blackjack is politely asking you to trust him,” said Percy.

“We’re almost there,” Sam’s voice crackled from the walkie-talkie. “Cas wants to know whether you see a grove of trees somewhere to the north?”

Despite her altitude sickness, Annabeth looked down and yes, there it was, a perfectly circular grove of trees about a mile in diameter, in the middle of a desert state. _The gods always strove for the dramatic and impossible._ “Yes. Could you guys go to the spot so that we can follow?”

“Wait, I’ll tell Dean…” There was some sort of general noise through the walkie-talkie, and then Dean’s voice warbled through, loud and clear. “No way, Annabeth! You both will land FIRST, and then I will drive in and park safely AWAY from that hell-horse of yours, got it?”

Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll let Percy know.” _What was it with boys and their cars?_

She shouted out Dean’s instructions to Percy, and soon they were preparing to land at the very edge of the grove. Blackjack circled downwards in tight, dizzying spirals, and they landed with a soft, gentle thud on the grassy edge. The Impala was still about five minutes away from them, kicking up dust as it sped in their direction.

“We’ve landed, Dean,” Annabeth said into the walkie-talkie. “Can you see us?”

“Perfectly,” Sam replied. “See you in a minute.”

Percy smiled down at Blackjack. “Nice landing, dude. Thanks. You can go now, okay? Tell Tyson we’re fine.”

Blackjack gave a series of short little snorts, then bent down his head and took flight. Annabeth was watching him disappear into the clouds when Percy asked her something that she didn’t hear.

“Huh?” she said, glancing at him.

“I said, I’ve been thinking about what Castiel said.”

“We’ll talk about that later, Percy.”

“Do you think this is the beginning of something big, Annabeth? Another end-of-the-world situation?” He was looking at her, and surprisingly, she saw a glimmering anger there. “Because, frankly, I’m tired of all this, man. If I ever get a choice to leave, I’ll drop everything and just go, Annabeth, I know it.”

Annabeth said nothing. She looked back at Dean’s car, which was close enough to make out the four distinct craters in the hood.  If she dared to be honest with herself, she knew she felt exactly as Percy did about the end of the world, too. Sometimes, she wondered whether she could just let the world end, once and for all. Then maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about anything any longer.

She gave Percy’s hand a short squeeze.

“When it comes to that, Percy, we’ll see.”

***

Dean leaned out of the driver’s window, scanning the horizon and the sky for any sign of that bleedin’ horse. He wasn’t going to take any more chances with his Baby. But all he saw were Percy and Annabeth standing in front of the grove, waiting. _Hand in hand. Very cute._

Sam was riding shotgun, and the walkie-talkie crackled out Percy’s voice. “Blackjack isn’t here, Dean. You can park, come on. We’re losing time.”

“Percy is correct,” Cas said from behind. “It’s late afternoon already.”

“Fine,” Dean muttered, and brought his car to a stop at the very edge of the grove of trees, making sure it couldn’t be seen from the road.

Sam and Dean loaded all their guns and hid an average of six knives between them.

Percy whistled when he saw the trunk filled with their weapons. “My friend Leo would totally fall in love with your car, man,” he said to Dean, who was in no mood to reply.

“Guy must have good taste,” said Dean curtly, and shut down the trunk of the Impala with just a bit too much force. They all reassembled under a particularly large tree, but it made no difference. Under the thick foliage of the dense growth of trees, every part of the grove was a uniform shade of dark green. The overcast sky somewhere above them did nothing to brighten up the day, either.

“Artemis’s camp is at the center of the grove,” said Cas.

“Let’s go, then,” said Dean, who was pissed off at the world in general and wanted to get going. “Stay together, pay attention to weird monstery noises, you know the drill.”

They started walking through the trees, cracking the silence with the sounds of breathing and of boots on old leaves and broken twigs. Dean had barely taken ten steps when he heard it. A very low, continuous hissing seemed to be coming from somewhere in front of him. He froze, raising his shotgun at nothing in particular. Behind him he heard the others stop to listen, too. And there it was, clearer in the silence and somehow louder now.

A deafening, inhuman _Screech_ filled the air and the foliage exploded in front of Dean. Without even thinking about it, Dean emptied the entire load of his shotgun into the creature, which fell down _inches away_ from him with a crunch.

An unreasonable bout of nausea slipped through Dean as he saw the creature he had killed. It was some sort of a huge scorpion, the size of a horse, now lying sideways, bleeding a viscous green fluid through the net of bullet holes riddled on its body. Its appendages faced Dean, pairs of shiny black calcinous feet folded upon themselves in death.

 _BLEEDING HEAVENS ABOVE,_ thought Dean. _Where are good old vampires or shapeshifters when you want them?_

Dean almost gagged once, but then busied himself in reloading his shotgun until the nausea passed. They started moving again, more cautious this time. Percy had taken out his sword out of nowhere. _Where did the kid keep it anyway?In his pocket?_ It wasn’t something you could stuff into your jeans pocket or string around your neck without very bloody consequences.

It was only after a while when anybody spoke.

“What did you load your gun with?” Annabeth asked Dean curiously.

“Usually, rock salt bullets,” Dean replied. “But today, it’s bronze filings mixed with the rock salt.”

Percy’s face took on a puzzled look. “You kill monsters with condiments?”

Sam sighed. “I’m guessing you don’t.”

“We use this,” Percy said, and whipped out his sword with such speed that he could have taken out Sam’s head at the shoulders if he was aiming for that. The world suddenly took on the quality of slow motion for Dean. All he saw was Percy, lunging with that wicked sword of his, towards Sam’s bare throat.

Without thinking, Dean lunged at Percy.

But Percy’s sword was already airborne, heading straight for Sam’s forehead, when Dean crashed into Percy with monumental force. _Trust no one._

The second high-pitched screech filled the air as all of Dean (with his heavy guns and three sheathed knives and leather jacket and camping boots) fell on what little there was of Percy.

“OW! HOLY-” The rest of the exclamation was muffled under Dean, who looked around urgently to find Sammy all safe and sword-in-the-head-free.

Percy’s bronze sword lay impaled on the tree trunk right behind Sam, glowing in the darkness of the forest, almost pulsating. It had completely pierced through what at first glance looked like a huge, furry black pincushion dripping with glowing milky white liquid. _The source of the shrieking._ Sam was now inspecting it with a great deal of interest.

At that moment, a backpack slammed sideways into Dean’s head.

“Ouch?” He questioned angrily, looking up at the person who hit him. Annabeth glared right back.

“Get off Percy!!!!” She exclaimed aggressively, a hand on her dagger hilt at her waist. He could almost _hear_ all the exclamation points as she shouted at him.

Sheepishly, he got off Percy, who must have been slightly concussed because he kept murmuring about something called a Basirantula.

Sam pulled out the sword from the tree and looked like he was debating whether to give it Percy or not, who still looked a little dazed. “You're right,” he said to Percy. “It was a baby Basirantula, not more than a day old.” Then Sam grinned. “Great reflexes by the way, man.”

“Oh, sure,” Annabeth said. “Say that to your brother.”

Behind Sam, Dean saw the _Basirantula_ stretch it legs, lazily, like it had just woken up or something. Nausea picked at him again, seeing the numerous hairy legs dripping with a milky fluid. He fully expected it to crawl away, but it shrunk into a hairy ball again and lay still.

Sam was collecting the milky fluid in small vials. Dean flashed him a quizzical look, absolutely grossed out.

“Why would you collect the body fluids of a baby monster is beyond me.”

“Bobby would want it. Magical venom and all that,” Sam explained, in an ‘It has to be done by someone’ tone.

It was a few moments before they could get Percy back on his feet. It was a whole lot more time before Annabeth forgave Dean for almost squashing her boyfriend. _Jeez,_ thought Dean. _Talk about over-protective girlfriends._

As they walked closer to the center of the grove, Dean felt Cas getting into step with him. He could hear his calm, unhurried breathing, so different from the rest of them who were panting slightly by now. _We are all just mere mortals, anyway._

“What is it, Cas?” Dean asked, and immediately cursed himself.

“We cannot have you panicking over Sam’s safety every time a toothpick is thrown his way, Dean.”

Dean sighed dramatically. “Look, nothing happened to the kid, okay? Not even a concussion. Everything’s peachy, man.”

“I agree that Percy’s condition is miraculously ‘peachy’, considering the force with which you crashed into him,” said Cas with an air of infinite patience. “What I’m trying to talk to you about is _your_ panicked reactions, Dean.”

“I’ll make sure I politely warn the next person who attacks Sam that I’ll be attacking them,” said Dean caustically. “Is that enough or do you want me to blow a whistle beforehand so that they manage to get out of my way in time, Cas?”

“That is exactly the kind of attitude that might cause unwanted injuries to innocent people,” said Cas, frowning.

“Are we there yet?” Percy called out from the back of the group. After the second attack, they had decided to keep their guns and swords ready, and Percy was protecting their right flank.

“Almost,” replied Cas and Dean at the same time, distracted from their argument.

They glanced at each other, surprised, and then smiled.

***

Cas had always known Artemis to be one gentle, dependable Olympian. Someone who wouldn’t harm anyone or anything without a reason (or an arrow). So, after about a dozen monsters that attacked them on their way to her camp, Cas certainly had a lot of questions for her.

_She invited me to come, and this is how we are greeted before even stepping into her camp._

Finally, at the center of the grove, they emerged into a round clearing, arranged in which were a circle of perfectly positioned silver tents.

A young girl was sitting cross-legged on the grass around the tents. Seeing them, she stood up and walked to them. It seemed like she had been waiting for him.

“You are here earlier than she was expecting,” she said, coming up to Cas, in a voice that betrayed her age with its edge of hardness. _Three hundred years? Perhaps a little more._ “I am Irize. Follow me.”

She led them to the largest tent in the center of the circle. It was disorientingly larger from the inside. At the end, on a silvery mesh of a mattress, was seated another girl. She looked ageless for some reason – her expression inexplicably young and old at the same time. And she was looking right at Castiel.

Castiel might have been an angel of the lord for five thousand years, but facing Artemis after so many years made him realize that he hadn’t even _lived_ a tiny fraction of the many millennia she had existed. She was as old as the earth itself. So seeing her in the body of a fifteen year old girl was a bit of a shock.

Before Cas could do anything at all to stop him, he heard Dean’s voice in the empty tent, addressing the girls.

“Hello there, ladies,” Dean said to them cheerfully. “We’re here looking for this moonshine goddess? Seen her around?”

Cas fought the urge to roll his eyes. _Moonshine goddess?_

Irize faced him angrily. “Be respectful, _mortal man_ ,” she hissed at Dean, who, comically enough, seemed puzzled.

“I’m trying to figure out which word was supposed to be the insult: ‘mortal’, or ‘man’?” he said with a sincere frown.

The other girl had a faint smile on her face. “Irize, it’s fine,” she said, cupping her face in her hands. “They are my guests, and some of them might be unaware of the intricacies and customs of our… world,” she said, looking directly at Dean and Sam. “Please,” she added, as an afterthought, “Be seated.”

Cas noticed there were those silvery mattresses all around the tent. Metallic and wiry as they looked, they were surprisingly soft and warm. Soon, they were seated in a loose circle.

“Where are the virgins, Artemis?” Cas asked her in the pleasant silence that ensued.

Artemis raised an eyebrow at Cas. “Is that why you wanted to consult me, Castiel of the Fourth Garrison? To enquire of the well-being of the virgins who you know have willingly offered themselves into my service as my Hunters?”

“That’s it, then?” Sam asked, surprised. “You're not holding them prisoner, or offering them up for sacrifice or something?”

A smile was Artemis’s only answer to Sam. She then turned to Percy and Annabeth, with a slightly disapproving look. “I see that they know nothing about the prophecy that brought you here, Daughter of Athena. Building trust does not seem to be your aim in this situation.”

“Prophecies…?” Dean asked, looking first at Artemis and then Percy.

Percy looked sheepishly back at Castiel and the others. He cleared his throat. “We were waiting for the, um, right moment.”

“It _is_ a bit… dark, you know,” Annabeth added. “We needed to see whether they were committed enough before we told them anything.”

Dean snorted. “I, for once, am officially commitment phobic. Declared so by the ghost of a psychiatrist.”

“She wasn’t even real,” Sam interjected.

“You go to ghosts for medical check-ups?” Percy asked, wide-eyed. “Wow.”

“That was different!” Dean protested in a dignified manner. “I was interrogating her for a case.”

Artemis and Cas let out the same dramatic sigh at the same time, effectively silencing the rest of them. Dean shot Cas a pretend-betrayed look. _Hey, you're on our team, man!_ Cas could almost hear Dean in his head.

“We should know the prophecy, Annabeth and Percy. Out in the grove, we have saved each other’s lives more than once. I believe that exhibits our commitment seriously enough.”

Percy nodded, and looked beside him at Annabeth. “Will you recite it?”

And that was the first time Cas heard the Prophecy of the Two Worlds.

***

Later that night, Cas woke Dean up with three pokes to his shoulder. Dean was up in an instant, with a hand on the gun he kept under his pillow. An inexplicable sadness rippled slowly through Cas. _Did Dean always sleep like this, always on the verge of waking?_

“Something wrong, Cas?” Dean asked, his voice rough, and laced with sleep.

“I have a surprise for you,” Cas whispered back to him. Sam stirred a little from the other bed, but did not wake up.

Dean sat up and swung his legs down into his boots. There was a smile in his curious green eyes. "A surprise?” He whispered back. “Really?”

“Well, yes,” Cas said, pretending to adjust the straps of the backpack he was carrying. “It  is not something very phenomenal, Dean, but I think it is something that will cheer you up.”

“O…ka-ay,” Dean said. He gestured to the tent opening. “Lead the way.”

“No, the forest is not safe, especially not in the middle of the night. I will take you there.”

Dean’s face screwed up in disgust. “Cas. Angel Metro equals nausea. And weird wiggly sensations. I’m still reeling from last time, man.”

“This is a shorter distance, Dean. It will be a much more pleasant journey this time.”

Two minutes later they were at the edge of the grove, where the only undergrowth was grass and mud. Hidden between two trees, the Impala gleamed in the moonlight, silent and still.

Cas saw Dean look over at him, puzzled. “My car is my surprise?” he asked, a very slightly disappointed tone entering his voice. Cas noticed that the roughness of sleep had gone from it.

Cas grinned back, unfazed, excited to see how Dean would react. “Maybe. Take a look at the hood, Dean.”

It took Dean a complete second to process this before he widened his eyes happily like a child on Christmas. “No… way! Did you really…?” He strode up to the other side of the Impala, leaning his head to get a glimpse as soon as he could. Cas walked right behind him, savoring the excitement and delight emanating from his best friend.

The four hoof-shaped craters on the hood had gone, completely gone, and the surface was perhaps smoother than it had been before Blackjack’s landing. Dean ran his palms across the glinting black surface, more than once, and all Cas could do was stand there, looking bashful. _Such gentleness towards the things you love, Dean. You're a warrior without a warrior’s crude  heart._

“I know you would have done the repairs yourself at Bobby’s, but that could only be done after this case was concluded and that could take weeks. So I thought I could do it for you as a surprise.”

“You bastard,” Dean said to him, grinning. “You might just have snapped your fingers and the angel mojo must have done the rest, right? Didn’t even get your hands dirty!”

Cas was confused and a bit hurt. “Wasn’t it a good surprise?”

If possible, Dean’s grin widened even more. “It was wonderful, Cas! The best thing ever, okay? Now shut up and get the beer out.”

“How did you- ”

“Your backpack, baby. I can hear the bottles. Four of them, right?”

“Baby?”

“What?”

“What did you just call me?”

“Uh, Cas.”

“No, you did not. I heard you very clearly. You said- ”

“Beer, Cas. Come on.”

“Dean!?”

“Yes, Cas?”

“Nothing.”

There was music, there was beer. And a sky full of stars and laughter. Cas hadn’t smiled so much in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still working on the Prophecy of the Two Worlds. It's gonna be in the form of a poem, like Riordan does it, and I'll include it in the next chapter.  
> Comments and kudos are welcome!  
> See you soon with the next chapter...  
> Wink.  
> I'llBuildATimeMAchine.


	6. The Prophecy of Two Worlds.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An excerpt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for such a delayed update.  
> Writing prophecies is hard. I sacrificed two lambs to Apollo before I could manage to come up with this.  
> I'd like to see how you guys interpret this - leave a comment?  
> Happy reading!

Collisions of two worlds can have only so many outcomes. One of the worlds might be destroyed, or both. Or they will both move together, fused beyond separation.

An exchange of energy on the level of an entire universe.

It was always meant to happen. One world could have been eternal, but two have made mortality inevitable due to their very existence.

The Prophecy of Two Worlds speaks about the day of the imminent collision. It cannot be stopped. It cannot be delayed. It can only be obeyed.

 

_To a treasure you must die to defend_

_A hundred steps into terror descend_

_So fall lower than you should ever fall_

_Where no angels can ever heed your call_

_What can revive words that cannot be said?_

_Unending memories of blood and blade_

_A warning to those who are scared to feel_

_The pain people hide is hardest to steal_

_No boon or bane will help you to rescue_

_The dead that that you believe will breathe for you_

_And on the day two worlds collide and crash_

_Only one will make it through crumbling ash_

_Only one will make it through crumbling ash_

 

-An ancient excerpt from the Iron Tablet. _Translated from Enochian._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How many of you have heard of the IIT-JEE? It's a nationwide test in India, so that you can get into engineering colleges in the country depending on how much you score. It is going to be in March 2018, and I'm gonna be giving it.  
> There's endless pressure, especially _now_ since it's the last lap of something which can (sadly) only be called a race. Of 1,500,000 students.  
>  If I ever take too much time to post the next chapter, or if I abandon this altogether, please understand, okay?  
> Love you guys...  
> I'llBuildATimeMachine.


	7. The Stairs of Lyideas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which ghosts need to be offered McDonald's Happy Meals to secure a meeting with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A treat to tide you through some more time. I'll be working on the next chapter.  
> Stay tuned. (I love how cliche that sounded.)  
> Love,  
> I'llBuildATimeMachine.

“Tell me again why we are in a cold, miserable cave with a dozen Happy Meals,” Dean asked, rubbing together his hands to keep them warm.

“Because we need to consult someone about the prophecy we heard.”

“You Greeks are such a superstitious lot.”

“The prophecy clearly refers to the Stairs of Lyideas,” Castiel explained, matter-of-factly.

Dean looked at Sam, puzzled. “Do we know what the stairs of Lyideas are?”

Percy turned around for a moment from his raising-the-dead routine. “You mean you do not know the story of Lyideas?”

“We come in peace,” Dean said, sarcastically. “Who is Lyideas?”

“He was a magician, long ago,” Cas said. “You do not know his story because the story is not strictly American or even Christian in nature. We do not know which culture Lyideas’s story can be classified into.”

“But you heard the prophecy and immediately thought of Lyideas. Why?” Sam asked.

“Because of the “hundred steps into terror” part of the prophecy, Sam. Listen to the story, and I think you will come to the same conclusion,” said Cas, and he started the tale of The Hundred Steps to Hell.

***

Lyideas was born and raised in icy mountain forests somewhere, to a tribe of magicians who worshipped the Circle of Gods. He, too, took up his family’s profession of the chief potion-maker in the village. However, as he was trained in the other arts of magic, he called himself a magician, too.

Soon, young Lyideas began helping his family to brew potions and collect ingredients for their magical draughts.

One dark night, he was walking through the forests, looking for a particular sunshadow tree. This tree glowed at night, and this was the time when the most potent harvest could be obtained from its tender new leaves. There was only one tree at the center of the forest, and it was guarded by a demon well-known by the potion-brewers of the village.

When young Lyideas approached the tree for the first time, he called out to this demon, requesting for a few leaves of the sunshadow. He was expecting a fearful apparition to emerge from the thick darkness. His sword was ready by his side, for any sign of aggression by the red-eyed, wild beast he was imagining.

But when Ptymine appeared before him, he lost all sense of danger. With hair spun from the glittering darkness itself, and gemlike blue eyes, she was as pale as the moonlight that dripped onto her flawless body, and her cherry colored lips were twisted into a beckoning smile.

Lyideas was lost to the darkness.

He went to the forest more frequently than ever before, and conversed with Ptymine until dawn broke and she had to hide. He found her a dangerous new distraction from the world around him, and he indulged in it until one day, when he called out to her and she didn’t appear. For seven nights, Lyideas went to the sunshadow to call to her, and for seven nights, she did not come. Mad with agony, and filled with grief for his lost love, he returned to the village, vowing never to marry any other woman all his life.

For fifty years, Lyideas never heard of Ptymine. Indeed, the silence from her side was so intense that he thought she was no more. Also, the sunshadow tree had caught a lightning strike one fearful and stormy year, and had exploded into the ground beneath it. The crater it left behind would be Lyideas’s retreat for almost twenty years.

One night, which was the night of his 71st birthday, he hobbled to the same spot of the sunshadow and sat down at the edge of the small crater. In the silence of the night, he heard a baby’s cry. Astonished, Lyideas looked down into the crater, and around him, only to see the flailing arms of a baby across the other side of the crater.

With tears of joy, he brought the baby home. It was a newborn girl, with soft downy hair spun of glittering darkness and gemlike blue eyes. He named her Ptymine.

Ptymine was… disturbing from the very beginning, but Lyideas ignored all her fallacies in his overjoyed state. After that night he found her, Ptymine had never cried, not even once. His maid swore that one night, she heard a girl’s laughter from the nursery, and actual whispered conversations with the dolls and stuffed animals. But she was just six months old. She could speak, or laugh. Ptymine’s pets somehow always ended up involved in violent, sometimes unsettling deaths. A strangled rabbit. Mice that ate each other up from their tails to their hindlegs. Fish that got stuck in the sharp edges of cracked fishbowls.

And she was unbearably beautiful, just like her mother. Men from the village lined up to buy Lyideas’s potions just to get a glimpse of her. In fact, her beauty was so famed all around that the gods themselves came down to see her.

The god of light once came, in his handsome mortal form, to ask for her hand. He waited, for many hours outside Lyideas’s house, on the pretext of buying a healing draught. When he met Lyideas, who was now very, very old and blind, he restored his vision as a blessing. Overwhelmed by the presence of a god and a miracle, Lyideas fell to his knees in gratitude. But Ptymine did not.

Any other mortal would have been condemned to an eternity of darkness for such behavior. However, moved by her grace and beauty, the god of light granted her seven days of forgiveness. Each day he came, and each day, she refused to kneel before him, let alone bow her head in deference. On the seventh day, he left with a warning and a heavy heart.

On the eighth day, Ptymine still refused to kneel. Finally releasing his anger, he cursed her. “A creature of hell is destined to the depths of hell, Ptymine! May your vanity and pride, and the ancient evil in your mother’s blood, suffer eternally in the darkness of hell!”

Lyideas fell before the god of light at this, sobbing for forgiveness. Only a father could have loved Ptymine enough to cry for her, and the god saw this with pity. “You deserve no suffering, worthy Lyideas. All your life, you have acted on love and love alone, as you do now. I will make the pit that leads to hell in the crater of your beloved sunshadow, but you must make the path. She must go to hell, but you can make her journey one of comfort. This much I will do for you, potion-maker. May we never see each other again.”

With one last wistful and angry look at Ptymine, the god of light disappeared.

Lyideas sobbed for an entire night, for now he knew his only daughter was eternally cursed to suffer. However, Ptymine spent this time to think about a way out. In her usual composed manner, she approached her father just when dawn was breaking over the horizon.

“Dear father, do not despair yet. I believe there is a way out of this curse, but I will need your assistance.”

“What can be done against the will of those who give the very light to this world? Oh, Ptymine, my daughter, why did you not kneel? An action of yours would have saved you from the fires of hell!” cried Lyideas, inconsolably.

Ptymine smiled. “It is not the _fire_ of hell that I am cursed to, father. The lord of the light did not speak the word _fire._ He cursed me to the _depths_ of hell, and in that I have found a way to escape the eternal fire you speak of.”

“What way can there be? Your poor father is ready to do all he can to save you from suffering!”

“Then construct a set of stairs that lead to the bitterness and darkness of Hell, father, but not deeper, not farther. Let them just touch the very tips of the eternal flames and then return, in an ever revolving, eternal movement. I will never burn. Is this in your capacity?”

It wasn’t. Lyideas was no builder. But all his years of potion making and of late, his daughter’s beauty, had resulted in him garnering a considerable amount of wealth. This he used, to find the best engineer in the world, from across the shores of seven seas. This man came from a nation called Greece, and he claimed to have designed exactly such stairs as Lyideas wanted. They were simple, and made of bronze coated with ivory, on which were engraved spells and magical words of the man’s language.

This engineer worked for seven months in the forest, in the crater of the sunshadow tree where an unending pit had appeared on the day of the curse. He brought fearsome beasts and men from his part of the world, magical beasts that helped him in his construction. History has forgotten the name of this brilliant man, who made a set of a hundred thousand moving steps that almost led to hell. But the steps remain, a tribute to his ingenuity, and to the skill of the sons of the Greek god Hephaestus.

The steps stayed there for fifty years, locked with three locks which have no keys. Ptymine died after this time elapsed, still beautiful, still cruel, and still with the demon blood running through her cold veins.

She walks eternally now, on a set of stairs that take her nowhere. She cannot escape, she cannot die. She refused to go to the Hell created by the gods, but by her admittedly ingenious idea, Ptymine now lives, maddened, in a hell of her own creation.

***

Sam face was frozen in the same expression of being highly impressed that he had had since the second half of the story. “That,” he said, “was one _hell_ of a story.”

A voice from Percy’s end of the cave laughed bitterly, warped and unclear, like across a long-distance telephone line.

Sam whipped around to see a translucent figure of an old man in front of Percy, with a couple of McD’s fries in his ethereal rheumy fingers. “You are right,” said the apparition. “It _is_ one hell of a story.”

Annabeth whispered to no one in general. “Everyone, that is Lyideas.”

"The guest of honour," Dean added.


	8. Ghostly Wisdom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghosts are annoying. Plans are never going to work. And Sam is Samantha after all.

Even as he gobbled down the fries hungrily, Lyideas seemed to be transforming from his originally transparent ghostly self to a more solid, powdery white hologram. He looked _old._ Not just I’m-your-grandfather kind of old, but really, really I’m-Father-Time-with-a-really-long-beard kind of old. He was wearing some kind of white fur that swept the floor grandly even as he used it to wipe his greasy fingers after he ate the fries.

“So,” he said, with an expectant air, and reached over for the coke. He sat down cross-legged and started looking at all of them between sips of the very modern cold drink.

Castiel stepped up to the ghost. “We need to know where we can find a way to hell that is better than most of the common ways. A path that will support mortal feet.”

“And you think I would know best because?” Lyideas looked up at him sneeringly, his bushy white beard shaking as he spoke.

Castiel narrowed his eyes at this attitude. “Because I know you do. You know the existence of all the ways that lead to hell, because before you made Ptymine’s steps, you made sure there were none like that before.”

“Why don’t you ask your friend, that overdressed king of Hell?” Lyideas said, taking Cas by surprise. Lyideas then turned to Percy. “Or that little friend of yours with the fancy sword? Why call upon me, huh?”

“Because the prophecy mentions you very directly,” Annabeth said in a voice laced with annoyance. “Just answer our questions, and we will let you leave.”

“Oh, I have no intentions of leaving so soon, girl,” Lyideas grinned at her, exposing all his grimy front teeth. _Ghosts need to brush too,_ thought Dean. “Well, there are two ways I know that will be… not entirely life threatening for foolish mortals like you. Why would anyone want to go to hell without being forced to is beyond even my reason.”

He took a deliberately slow sip of the coke. The bright red of the large styrofoam cup looked too bright against the backdrop of his cold whiteness. He then spoke again.

“The first one would be the Mine of Death. I personally have not seen this path. It is somewhere in the middle of the largest desert human eyes have seen. All you have to do is cross the tunnel that leads to the mines and there you should come across a pit that never ends, except at Hell, of course.” Here, Lyideas suddenly looked at Cas. “But it will not work for you, angel. If you fall through that pit, you will lose all your power.”

Castiel frowned. “Lose my powers?”

“I have read about beings like you. This grace of yours is a protective bubble around you, like mortals have their skin. The darkness of the Mine is so sharp, it will constantly grate against your frail heavenly grace, and after a fall this deep…” Lyideas shook his head in mock seriousness. “You will reach Hell _skinned alive._ ”

Dean winced at this imagery. “There must be another way, right, old man?” he asked. “One that is angel-friendly?”

Lyideas smiled wickedly, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “There is no other way.” He pretended to think about it, then he said, “Except one.”

“Really? Will you tell us where that is?” Annabeth asked sarcastically, more annoyed now. She hated all and every kind of drama, and Lyideas’s attention-seeking behavior instantly put her on an angry edge.

“My staircase,” said Lyideas, smiling benignly. “It is the only way an angel can reach hell without being grated into a painful pulp of mortality.”

Suddenly, Dean understood why Lyideas was so cheerful right now. A cold finger of anger and realization made its way down his spine. “You want to go with us,” Dean stated.

“What, no!” Percy and Annabeth exclaimed at the same time.

But Lyideas practically beamed at Dean, his mad eyes alight with merriment. “Yes, my lad. Who else will guide you into the unending darkness? Who else will very helpfully point out every trap and ensnarement to you? _Who else will save you from Ptymine?”_

A short shocked silence followed this offer.

“But,” Sam said, speaking up for the first time, “Your stairs will never lead us to Hell, Lyideas. Wasn’t that their whole point? Never to go to Hell?”

Lyideas scowled at Sam. “You're not the brightest bulb, are you, boy? My stairs are a rotating endlessness in themselves, that is true. But at every point in time, one part of the stairs is so close that you can reach your hands out and touch it. It is only a matter blowing up the steps at the precise moment and jumping off!”

While he was saying this, Lyideas had slowly started to become transparent again. Looking down at his fading hands, he smiled bitterly, then looked up. “You will need a guide. I am always here to serve you.” He then faded away completely with a smile that looked more murderous than subservient.

***

“We cannot trust slime like that,” Annabeth said.

“But we will need a guide,” said Cas, in a low, serious voice. “He knows those stairs better than anyone.”

“All the more reason not to trust him, then,” Percy countered. “Ghosts don’t really want to help you. They are just trying to fulfill their own needs. And they grow stronger all the time. My friend Nico was led down the wrong path by the ghost of Minos once.”

“What I don’t understand is why we need a guide just to climb down a lousy staircase! I mean, how hard can it be, right?” Dean interjected, exasperated. _Couldn’t they see how obvious this was?_

Castiel shook his head. “It is not your regular staircase, Dean. The architect who made this is unknown, but everyone believes that it was actually Daedalus who designed it.”

Annabeth’s eyes widened. “And if it’s anything like the Labyrinth…”

“Yes,” Cas said. “It is exactly like the Labyrinth, in some ways even worse. Just like the Labyrinth had its own life, so does this staircase. And it has been travelling, over and over again, inside the very depths of Hell for millennia. Whatever this staircase has evolved into, it will be evil without a doubt.”

Percy let out a deep sigh of resignation. “We need him, then.”

 _The worst part is, we don’t even know why we’re doing this,_ thought Dean. Which was true. “To a treasure you must die to defend’, was the very first line of the prophecy, but it had been three days since they had first heard it in Artemis’s camp. They still didn’t know what this ‘treasure’ was supposed to be or why they were supposed to die in its defense.

This was exactly what Dean hated. He needed actions based on situations at hand, in front of his eyes. He wanted to remove his gun to shoot a monster when he _saw_ a monster running towards Sam or him or some innocent person. He didn’t want to remove his gun just because some goddamn _nursery rhyme_ told him that a monster was going to come.

The Greeks were bloody annoying.

The other, teeny-tiny part of him was still grappling with a small problem he still hadn’t voiced out loud.

_Hell._

Hell, with a capital ‘H’, was a place Dean still remembered. His nightmares had decreased in frequency, but that did not mean they had stopped. More than the things that were done to him, Dean had nightmares about the things _he_ had done to others. What that place had made out of him. He would never, ever admit it, even to himself, but he was scared.

_There, I’ve thought it now._

***

They all sat down that night, and made something that could pass for a plan. The problem was, even with Sam, Annabeth and Cas being the planners, there was nothing to plan about because they didn’t know what they were planning for. Not dying was priority number one, of course, but how long would that work? Especially when the very first line of the prophecy talked of death in defense of some treasure.

“So,” Sam said, “Percy, Dean and Cas will take the stairs, guided by Lyideas, okay? They will carry explosives and will blow up some steps and jump through the hole right when the steps are closest to Hell.”

“And Sam and I will go through the tunnel in the Mines of Death, and fall down into Hell. Cas is responsible for transporting us there with his angel stuff and come back to lead the Lyideas expedition,” continued Annabeth.

“By the time Castiel drops you guys off to that awesome sounding place, I will summon Lyideas. Then, I will also summon Charles Beckendorf, our very own friendly ghost and staircase-blowing expert of the day. Cas takes us all to Lyideas’s forest, and we start tripping down some stairs,” Percy continued in a faux-happy tone that made Dean cringe.

Dean continued, seriously, “Sam and Annabeth will make it to Hell, _alive_ , and call Crowley for a pit stop at his place. Until we also reach Crowley’s underground palace, you will try to figure out what and where this goddamn treasure is. Then we’ll all reach there, _alive_ , except for the ghosts, you know, because they’re all already… Anyway, we meet up there, take this treasure and ask Crowley to help us up to the real world again.”

Castiel frowned. “We’re depending too much on Crowley agreeing to help us in the first place.”

“If your friend doesn’t help you,” Percy said, “I could always call on Nico for help.”

“Don’t involve him into this,” Annabeth said a little defensively. “Let Nico be Plan B.”

“Okay.”

***

With fire burning at the mouth of their cave, they spent the night resting. Annabeth and Percy lay next to each other, looking at stalactites dipping towards them from the roof of the cave. Percy’s thumb rubbed slow circles at the back of her hand.

“We’ve never split up for a quest before,” said Annabeth, looking at him.

“It’ll be okay, you know,” Percy said to her, trying to be reassuring. “I trust Sam. He could give his life to save someone else.”

“I know, but… I’ll be afraid all the time that something happened to you.”

Percy smiled. “I won’t worry at all.” He looked at her, and saw her frown at him in confusion. He pushed away some of her blond stands from her face, fingers brushing her cheek and travelling down to her waist as he kissed her, slowly and silently.

“You're ferocious enough to take on Hell, Annabeth. I won’t worry at all.”

***

Dean was checking the ammo bag, seeing how much and how little of everything they had, and diving all of it between Sam and him.

“Dean.”

Sam’s voice had that tone. Let’s-talk-about-our-feelings tone.

“I’m fine, Sam,” said Dean, giving his usual reply to this particular tone.

But Sam being Samantha, as usual, came up and sat down next to the ammo bags and bullets and guns. “It is brave of you to do this, Dean.”

“Thank you and _goodbye_ , Samantha.”

“I wouldn’t dream of going back to cage after all that happened, Dean. It was unbearable the first time. There were nightmares every night that I returned here. Going back there, again… I don’t know what will happen to me if I would do something like that again.”

“Dude, is this the part where we start crying in each other’s arms?” Dean asked irritably. _Sam is such a baby at times,_ he thought.

_But that’s one more reason why I am the one who has to stay strong._

“And Hell? That was nothing, Sam,” said Dean, grinning his special this-is-awesome grin. “I would go there on vacation, okay?”

Sam sighed and looked away.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want them to split up into teams, but sorry, it's necessary for us to conserve Castiel's powers for later.  
> As usual, I love you all! Keep telling me what you like or do not like... (And in case I have to abandon this fic, please, _please_ forgive me.)  
>  Charles Beckendorf should be there in the next chapter.  
> Hugs and excitement,  
>  **I'llBuildATimeMachine.**


	9. Escalators to Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they take the escalators to Hell. Or should that be _descalators_?

The fries were a bit soggy the next morning, but Percy was fine with that. He didn’t think that Beckendorf would really mind. He was a nice guy.

After Cas had left with Annabeth and Sam to the Mines of Death (nice name, right?), Dean didn’t look like he was up for much conversation. Percy watched him sharpening and polishing knives, and cleaning out the barrels of all those wicked guns Dean owned. He decided that he did not want to engage in conversation a guy who held about three ways of killing Percy instantaneously, in his hands. So he started to do the next best thing : raising some ghosts.

There was this thing with ghosts. Percy did not like them. He knew it was pretty normal for ghosts to engage with mortals, especially after meeting all those war spirits in Camp Jupiter. But he believed that the dead should stay dead. He never understood how Nico was so comfortable around them, like he would be going to a slumber party with all the ghosts and dead people in his father Hades’s underground palace or something.

An unwelcome image of Nico and ghosts in a slumber party came up to him. Percy shook his head, worried. It seemed like the stress was getting to him now.

Finally, he poured the Coke into the floor of the cave, where it was absorbed like the solid rocky floor was a sponge. And out of this coke puddle, rose wreaths of white powdery mist that solidified into one of his friends from Camp Half-Blood. Guilt gnawed at him somewhere inside as he saw Charles Beckendorf’s ghost slurp up all the fries. At last, Beckendorf looked up and met Percy’s eyes with a frown. “Percy.”

Percy managed a weak smile. “Hi, Charles. Long time.”

What else was he supposed to say? Sorry you had to blow yourself up in a ship full of monsters? Sorry I listened to you and let you do it? Sorry your girlfriend turned out to be Kronos’s spy at Camp?

Damn, reunions sure were awkward for half-bloods.

Charles was still frowning. Was he still angry at Percy? Did he hate him? Instead, Charles said in a tone of dissatisfaction, “The fries are soggy, Percy.”

Percy almost laughed with relief. “Can you taste them?”

“Do not offend me, Percy, or I promise I will haunt your cabin forever. _Of course_ I can taste them.”

“I’m sorry about the fries. We’re kind of in a secluded mountain cave. Little hard to get a decent McDonalds in here.”

Beckendorf nodded as if he understood. “So,” he asked, “What have you called me for? I’m assuming it wasn’t to have a conversation with me after all these years.”

Within a few minutes, Percy had explained the situation to Beckendorf. “So Lyideas is going to guide us to Hell, but I don’t trust the guy, you know. He has this really long beard. I want you to come with us, too, and help me figure out how to stop this elevator forever. If it’s anything mechanical, you’ll be able to figure it out, right?”

Before Beckendorf could reply, Dean came over. “This your friend?”

“Yeah,” Percy said. “Charles Beckendorf, son of Hephaestus. He’s going to be our electrician for the trip.”

Charles scowled good-naturedly. “I never agreed so far, Percy. And your adjectives make me feel like I shouldn’t agree.”

Dean was regarding him carefully, as if unsure what to say to him. “They have a gym up in heaven, dude?” he said, finally.

“I work in the celestial forges of Hephaestus in my spare time,” was the dignified reply.

“Oh…kay. You make weapons?”

Charles scowled again. “It’s not very glamorous all the time, man. Sometimes its weapons. Sometimes weird things. Like, if Apollo suddenly wants to gift his newest girlfriend a duck-shaped pendant, I have to mould that. Apparently, a lot of celestial bronze fittings are required in the bathrooms of Olympus.”

Dean laughed. “You make chamber pots for the gods?”

“If you want to put it that way, yes.”

“Nice to see that you two have grave war strategies to discuss, but we have Lyideas back here in three… two… one,” said Percy from the Ghost Corner of the cave. And sure enough, a white mist was rising through the floor of the cave. Soon, Lyideas’s unpleasant face appeared and solidified. He seemed to enjoy sipping coke, even though by now it was very flat.

As soon as Lyideas saw Beckendorf, an expression of surprise and betrayal crossed his face. It was comical to see. “You- you... _kids_ found someone to replace me, is that it?” he spluttered angrily at Percy.

“No, Lyideas,” said Dean placatingly. “He’s just here to serve you, you know?  To take care of all your… ghostly needs and stuff.”

Beckendorf glared witheringly at Dean, but said nothing. Lyideas seemed pleased with this, but still looked skeptically at everyone. “Where is your angel friend?”

It seemed like that question actually called Cas, because that’s when he materialized in the cave. He looked at the assembly of friends and ghosts as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “Sam and Annabeth are safe and on their way into Hell. Sam wanted you to have the entire library at the bunker if he didn’t make it, Dean.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “I’d rather die.”

Lyideas shouted for attention. “Should you not be falling at my feet right now, asking me to escort you to the Hundred Stairs?”

Everyone turned to him.

He looked uncertain now. Sulking, he said, “Or you could do that after you finish talking to each other. I’ll just wait.”

Beckendorf rolled his eyes at Percy as if to ask him to send him back to Elysium. Really, he could handle making another pearl encrusted chamber pot for Aphrodite but not this old man who also happened to a an attention seeking, sulking old man.

“So where do we go from here?” Dean asked. “North?”

Castiel nodded. “Yes. I managed to narrow down the location of the stairs, so that we do not have to trust Lyideas entirely.”

Beckendorf nodded like he agreed. “Smart move.”

“How far?”

“Twelve miles.”

That fact coming from Cas seemed reassuring, and everyone cheered up. They started for the Hundred Steps, walking in double file, with Lyideas proudly leading them as he flickered in and out of view in the bright daylight. It was cheery, sunny weather, but it also meant that the sun was melting all the snow. The mountains were treacherous at this time. Percy slipped all the way down the base of the mountain they were descending, much to the alarm of everyone present.

“I’m – ouch – fine – ouch!” Percy’s voice hardly comforting them.

“Stay where you are, kid.” Dean shouted back. “Are you hurt or something?”

Dean swore he heard Percy’s voice mutter painfully about a thorny wild rosebush and something called _gluteus_.

“Come again?” Dean asked, puzzled.

“I said I’m _fine_ ,” came back a very grumpy reply.

***

“This is it,” Lyideas declared.

Dean looked around. They were standing on the edge of an admirably big crater, perfectly spherical and perhaps forty feet deep at its deepest. All around it was forest, but not a hint of grass could be seen in the crater. The very earth was charred to a uniform glassy blackness. And no birds or animals. Nothing at all but silence and darkness.

“At the very center of the crater we shall find the first step and the three keyless doors that guard it,” Said Lyideas, a little too gleefully for anybody’s taste.

Beckendorf shifted from foot to foot uneasily, his huge muscled body one tense plank. “I sense fire here. And death. A lot of it, and not of the peaceful kind.”

Lyideas frowned at Beckendorf. “Aw, Forger, come on. Don’t ruin this party now. We’re almost there.”

Beckendorf looked at him sharply. “What did you sacrifice here, you inhuman wretch? What was it?”

“Hmm, let me see,” said Lyideas, scrunching up his forehead and pulling out fingers to count down as he continued. “A girl born exactly seven years and seven nights ago. A boy born exactly nine years and nine dawns ago. Three bulls. The head of an enemy, the feet of a leader, and the hands of an artist. Does that come to nine? No? Oh, yes – freshly removed eyes from a magician, my own eyes.”

As he said this, Lyideas nearly glittered with power, such was the effect of his recollections. Still, he was nothing more that a ghost.

Cas, on the other hand, was almost trembling with anger and indignation. “You reptile,” Cas spat out, overcome. Dean looked surprised at this sudden burst of emotion from Cas, who wasn’t done yet.

“A _seven year old and a nine year old strangled before each other,_

_Three bulls born three years ago of the same mother –_

_An enemy’s thoughts, a leaders steps and an artist’s face;_

_And worthy of Hell and Fire, the summoner’s own gaze._

_In the earth where the sun rises and sets, where the mountains lie_

_And the plains stretch, the seas begin and the oceans die.”_

Protection from the devil himself! _That_ is why your Steps haven’t been discovered by any hunters – that is why the locks are keyless, aren’t they?”

Dean had rarely seen Cas like this. In anger he seemed taller. His eyes, dark and hot as coals. His voice shook Dean’s body with it’s roar. (It was in times like this that he realized how fortunate he was to have a supernatural best friend instead of a supernatural best enemy.)

Lyideas was doing his best not to cower, but his beard was twitching strangely. “I did what I had to do, angel,” he said, trying hard to keep his voice from becoming a high-pitched squeak for mercy. “It is not my fault that you are so sensitive and – ”  There is no doubt that he would have continued with his justifications, had it not been for a streak of white-hot bolt of energy that emanated from Cas that must have incinerated the ghost on the spot.

Cas looked as stunned as everyone else when the heat dissipated. Bent over, with his hands on his knees, he was panting slightly.

“I thought that guy was our guide for today,” said Percy, not too wistfully.

Dean looked at Cas carefully. “You all right, man?”

Straightening up, Cas replied to them both in a steely voice. “I’m fine. I cannot say what anger overpowered me there, but it was too strong to control.”

“But why?”

His smoldering eyes hit Dean with the intensity of a wildfire. “Don’t you understand? He made a deal with Hell itself, Dean – he offered Hell a new pathway, a new entrance, in exchange for protection of the said entrance. And to do this, you know the limits he has to go to?”

Dean and Percy exchanged a look. “Uh, no?”

“It is the Spell of Nine! Corrosion of nine souls, beyond redemption, two children – symbols of innocence, three bulls- symbols of strength, a leader’s feet – stands for guidance towards the right path. An artist’s hands signify beauty and the power of creation! Destruction of an enemy’s thoughts are the symbol of his own power, his own capability to destroy whatever comes to stop him. And the giving of his own eyes, it is meant to show Heaven that he never wants to look into Light and Goodness again!

“The _worst_ things, combined with the destruction of the _best_ things of this world – that is how you summon the power of Hell – not Crowley or his minions, Dean, but something much, _much more evil_.”

Cas closed his eyes and paused for a deep breath.

“The soul of Hell itself is guarding the entrance to the Steps.”

Beckendorf stared with wide eyes at Cas. “Dude. That’s worse than anything even Greek myths have.”

“Evil evolves with time, Beckendorf. It grows into more and more horrible things until it is strong enough to fight the Light.”

“He’s starting to sound like the Oracle back home now,” muttered Percy, fiddling with Riptide’s cap, which glowed now, in the dimming light of falling dusk.

“Guess we’ll have to camp here, then,” said Dean, sighing. “Atleast until Lyideas manages to crawl back from wherever you sent him.”

Cas smiled weakly. “He _might_ take the entire night.”


	10. Reception In Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So fall lower than you should ever fall  
>  Where no angels can ever heed your call” _  
> They reach Crowley’s place a bit too fast, and do not die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive the previous chapter. I am sorry for the bad quality of writing you had to endure. **I really am.** I deleted it and am giving you this (hopefully) better one. To new readers, I am a very bad person. To older readers, THANK YOU FOR STICKING WITH ME SO FAR. I LOVE YOU GUYS.
> 
> Keep commenting, even if it is for you to tell me how bad I am.

Annabeth wished Percy was here. Even after falling into the pit that led to Tartarus, she was apprehensive about this particular fall into hell.

“I’ve never _technically_ been to Hell,” said Sam, who was standing next to her.

Sam was not helping matters, either.

They both stood there, at the edge of the Mines of Death, looking down into the endless terraced layers carved out in the earth, until it faded into the darkness. They had both climbed the chain-link fences surrounding the Mine, ignoring the signs that shouted “NO ENTRY” and “TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSCECUTED”. That was routine for them both. No Entry signs were like “Welcome!” signs for half-bloods, and Annabeth was sure that hunters like Sam felt right at home in such places, too.

“So, uh, how exactly do we do this?” Annabeth asked. “We can’t really start walking into the mine. That’s dangerous.” By ‘dangerous’, Annabeth meant relatively more dangerous than their daily lives, of course.

Sam’s eyes were searching the flat land around the perimeter of the mine pit. The painful flatness of the land stretched till the horizon with no relief of any sort, except a boarded up shack the must have seen better days. “There’s this thing called a mine shaft,” he said. “A mechanical elevator that miners must have used when this mine was functional. We should find that.”

Annabeth had heard of those. But not in a good context. Mine elevators were generally in the news for _failing_ and falling right to the bottom of the mine, a thousand feet down, usually. Not good. They needed to reach Hell without dying first. _Alive._ Dean had been very clear about that part of the plan.

“Let’s check that shack.” she told him, and started to walk towards the shack, wiping sweat off her forehead. It was hot as hell here. She smiled at that thought. Percy would absolutely love the fact that it was hot as _hell_ here.

They did not much talk until they reached the shack, whose porch offered the much needed and only shade for miles. It’s main door held a strange metal sign, that looked very new compared to the rest of the decrepitated timber and plaster.

**KINDLY KNOCK.**

**OUR GUIDE WILL SEE YOU SHORTLY.**

**Thank You.**

Sam glanced at her. Annabeth shrugged and unsheathed her dagger, poising it to slice through anything unpleasant. With one hand on his gun, Sam knocked, a surprisingly mundane gesture under the circumstances. What followed was something Annabeth would never forget.

A few inconspicuous clicking sounds rent the stillness of the hot desert air. Before they could react, the floor under them disappeared, and swung them down into absolute darkness. That it was a tunnel Annabeth got to know from the hot wind rushing through her hair as she screamed in surprise. But that it was a tunnel with walls of hot black _fire_ was something she got to know only after her flailing arms touched one side of the walls and her elbow immediately sent back a white hot shot of unbearable pain through her entire body. She drew herself into a tight protective ball, hands tightly wound around knees and head.

When they hit the strangely soft, elastic ground, the jerk to her body must have been enough to dislocate every joint, including her knuckles, but she felt fine. Slowly, she opened her eyes to see what the curious material under her was – when had she closed her eyes anyway? Sam was right next to her, already standing on what seemed like a giant purple trampoline.

Well, she _called_ it purple, but the color was so bright and gaudy that there should have been a new name coined just for this particular shade, the tint of a particularly excited neon purple eggplant.

Slightly translucent people, animals and monsters roamed the reception. Two flamingos were squawking angrily at each other outside one door marked Exit. Annabeth tensed immediately seeing a minotaur but relaxed slightly, very slightly, when she saw the mop and bucket in his hands, and the morose expression on his face. A long line led to a black granite desk behind which a short squat weasel glared in annoyance at the dead men.

“Is that… the receptionist?”

***

The weasel could speak.

Of course it could speak.

“Yes,” it deadpanned. “I can speak. Now, how may I help you?”

“We’re here to see Crowley,” Sam said, over the heads of two disgruntled gnomes who were ahead of them in the line.

The weasel did not react. It did not offer them personal escorts to Crowley’s place, or offer them refreshments while they waited for a high-priority air-conditioned conveyance straight to Crowley’s place.

“May I interest you in exciting ice-skating opportunities over the Lava Lake? Or the Tourist Snowball Fights in the Fire Fountain? Or the Skydiving Sundays in the Steam Geysers?”

“All that sounds really lovely, I’m sure, but we need to meet Crowley,” Sam said, pointing a gun at the weasel unnoticed by the others around.

The weasels eyes fixed on the barrel. Annabeth never knew a weasel could look so cold and calculating. With his eyes still on the barrel, the weasel said, “Sure, sires. On your own head be it.”

He picked up a landline handset curiously labeled “Do Not Call” and put a call through.

“Hello, sir, good afternoon, There are two humans here to see you and--” The weasel snuck a glance back up to Sam’s face. “Kill them, sir? Now? The floor here was cleaned just some time before and—”

The weasel calmly listened for a couple of seconds to some angry babble from the phone. “Their names, sir? Uh, I must— what are your names?”

“Winchester. Just say Winchester,” Sam said.

“Winchester, sir.” Immediately, the pitch of the infuriated babble from the phone intensified. The weasel ignored it and continued. “Now, any instructions as to how to kill them or will our standard protocol suffice? – Repeat the— yes, Winchester, yes sir one of them is quite tall—oh, okay. Yes.”

A slightly disappointed look later, the weasel said to them, courteously as ever, “The order to kill you has been taken back, but please sit down in the waiting area. Refreshments will be available to you soon. Thank—” Without completing the one last formality of his life, the weasel suddenly vaporized into a cloud of black powder and brown fur.

“Such annoying creatures,” came a voice from near the Exit door. Sam and Annabeth both swiveled around to face the person they’d come to meet.

Seeing him for the first time, Annabeth couldn’t fathom how the king of hell looked so… normal, if that was a word that should be used in the reception area of hell. He was a short man, with snaky, puffed eyes and short, sparse hair. His smile was welcoming and curious and cunning all at once. The well-tailored Italian suit ensemble was the only thing that tried to show the great power he apparently held, but even that was subdued by the lavender colored silk sleeping cap that was still on his head. Looks like he’d dressed in a hurry.

Sam noticed that cap, too, and was trying to gesture to Crowley with a confused movement of fingers and hand towards his head. “Um,” he said, pointedly looking at the cap.

Crowley looked up at the cap and sighed. With a very elegant movement, he removed it from his head and stuffed it into one of the pockets of his suit.

“So, moose,” he said to Sam, while glancing at Annabeth curiously, “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“We are here to get something.” Sam replied curtly.

Crowley did not change his tone of amiability. “Ah, business trip, then?” He looked askance at the janitor who was grumpily sweeping off the fur and powder that used to be the weasel. “Let us talk somewhere more… comfortable, shall we? Come along now, girl, favor me with your name. Moose, I know you know this place very well, but follow me. There have been many renovations since when you were here last.”

“I have the knife, Crowley.” Sam said carefully, flashing the blade from under his jacket. “No tricks.”

Crowley looked at the blade, but had the audacity to look bored. “What? And here I thought we were besties. I tell you, girl, he’s a hard one to love.”

Holding open the exit door, he walked them out of the reception area into a surprisingly sterile looking passageway the stretched on and on until Annabeth’s eyes could see.

“This Hell is kind of underwhelming,” Annabeth noted. “Where are all the tortured souls and the fire and brimstone and the demons and monsters? You should really go see Tartarus for some inspiration.”

Crowley chuckled. “Each Hell reflects the civilization it has been made for. We’re more… business-facing. Don’t want to disturb the clients with those crude Tartarus-like images, do we? But if you want to see what’s behind this façade, there you go.” He snapped his fingers, and the wall on the right changed into clear, transparent glass.

The first thing that hit Annabeth was the screaming. People, if they could be called human beings at this juncture, were screaming. There was not one scream that could be isolated from the heaving, vomiting, alive mass of sound that engulfed her; a wave of sound that was like every pain in the world, together. Men and women and children, naked and flayed down to every last bit of skin clawed at the clear glass, leaving finger trails of plasma and blood and pus behind as they collapsed onto their knees for mercy. She could see the exposed flesh on their bloody scalps and shoulders burning and moving and sizzling like cooking flesh ion the heat beyond the glass. It radiated to her, too, that cursed heat, and something inside her soul shifted slightly, off-balance, falling, losing gravity and gaining speed.

Crowley’s fading voice came to her from somewhere behind as a pain shot up to her knees. “Now, can you imagine negotiating a deal in that cacophony? No.”

She fainted with the image of those black, black eyes. Eyes melting in mercy and burning in pain and looking for someone to give their pain to. Eyes that will never leave her nightmares ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, how was it?  
> *sweats nervously*
> 
> I'll try to be more regular in my updates SORRY


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